The most anti-Israel president ever

President Barack Obama didn’t just apologize for the Bush years in his speech to the UN yesterday. He delivered what is probably the most anti-Israel speech ever given by a sitting president.

Once again, he used the argument that there is some kind of moral equivalency between Israeli settlements and Palestinian incitement. If you dig just a little, you find that “incitement” includes the Palestinian Authority’s refusal to have a single map of Israel in its textbooks, its constant Jew-hatred in its official media, statements, and even sermons, its referrals to “Palestine from the river to the sea” (that would be where Israel is currently), and the utter refusal by the Obama administration to note that the PA reinforced its anti-Israel charter and also added more anti-Israel conspiracy theories, such as the one that Israel poisoned Yasser Arafat.

We continue to call on Palestinians to end incitement against Israel, and we continue to emphasize that America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. (Applause.)

But why do they only call on Palestinians to “end incitement”? Because, as the narrative goes, oppressed people cannot be held responsible for the terror attacks that continue every single day, by Palestinians in the West Bank, not Hamas—and so, Obama does not call for attacks on Israelis to end. Because they don’t exist.

Note the language of the next section. It could have been written by Obama’s friend and supporter, Rashid Khalidi:

The time has come — the time has come to re-launch negotiations without preconditions that address the permanent status issues: security for Israelis and Palestinians, borders, refugees, and Jerusalem. And the goal is clear: Two states living side by side in peace and security — a Jewish state of Israel, with true security for all Israelis; and a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967, and realizes the potential of the Palestinian people. (Applause.)

And here’s the most anti-Israel statement ever uttered by a sitting president:

Now, I am not naïve. I know this will be difficult. But all of us — not just the Israelis and the Palestinians, but all of us — must decide whether we are serious about peace, or whether we will only lend it lip service. To break the old patterns, to break the cycle of insecurity and despair, all of us must say publicly what we would acknowledge in private. The United States does Israel no favors when we fail to couple an unwavering commitment to its security with an insistence that Israel respect the legitimate claims and rights of the Palestinians. (Applause.)

That’s a hat tip to the Stephen Walt School of OHMIGOD, Israel Lobbyists Control the Government!. That’s the implication that people are afraid to speak out against Israel, because we all know what happens to people who do that. They get on the New York Times bestseller list. Just ask Jimmy Carter, and Walt & Mearsheimer. I wonder what their lecture fees are now? Probably even higher since Walt is writing for Foreign Policy. Oh, the horrors of being silenced by The Israel Lobby. Book deals, lecture tours, income level rising—yeah, that scary lobby keeps everyone, even the president of the United States, from speaking out against Israel. Like, say, at a venue of, oh, the United Nations. Saying publicly what “everyone” was only able to say privately before today, apparently.

Note the second half of the bolded quote above: “the legitimate claims and rights of the Palestinians.” Mahmoud Abbas could have written that. Obama doesn’t actually delineate what these rights are, but these words are usually followed with “a return of all refugees,” as well as “an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.” (And as I have noted many times in the past, they don’t say “east Jerusalem.” They say “Jerusalem.” That would be what Obama was talking about when he insisted it’s time to rush ahead to “final status” issues. Only they’ve been renamed.

The time has come — the time has come to re-launch negotiations without preconditions that address the permanent status issues: security for Israelis and Palestinians, borders, refugees, and Jerusalem.

“Without preconditions” appears to be aimed at the Palestinians, who have dug in their heels since Obama’s Cairo speech. As Barry Rubin points out:

As I keep stressing the ONLY reason there have been no negotiations for six months—a point the media never points out—is that Obama introduced the demand that Israel freeze all construction on settlements. This issue had never prevented talks before but once Obama raised the ante, well the Palestinians couldn’t be less militant than America’s president.

It also wouldn’t be an Obama speech if he didn’t try to make his copyrighted approach to evenhandedness. So, in return for the Israel-bashing above, what must the world do? Why, stop bashing Israel. Recognize Israel’s legitimacy. Because it’s not like the UN’s establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948 was enough to do such a thing. So the reverse of America doing no favors for Israel by being a staunch ally? Well, it’s obvious:

And — and nations within this body do the Palestinians no favors when they choose vitriolic attacks against Israel over constructive willingness to recognize Israel’s legitimacy and its right to exist in peace and security. (Applause.)

Get it? The flip side of America’s support for Israel is the UN General Assembly, using organizations like the UN Human Rights Council (which Obama has had us join) singling out Israel, and pretty nearly only Israel, for criticism.

Obama uses his compare-and-contrast one last time, by talking about the price paid by Israelis and Palestinians. Note the extreme contrast, which goes hand in hand with what I wrote yesterday about the risk being all on Israel:

It’s paid by the Israeli girl in Sderot who closes her eyes in fear that a rocket will take her life in the middle of the night. It’s paid for by the Palestinian boy in Gaza who has no clean water and no country to call his own.

The girl in Sderot may be murdered in her sleep by Hamas rockets. Or a shot fired at her car while driving with her family near a Palestinian town. The price paid by Palestinians? Well, kids in Gaza don’t have clean water because Hamas keeps stealing the pipes to make rockets to rain on children in Sderot. Yeah, that’s a pretty equivalent risk situtation for each side.

His claim to evenhandedness is absurd. There is no comparison between having “no country to call his own” and fearing death in your bed at night. One of these things is not like the other.

I didn’t care for the James Baker crew of the Bush 41 White House. I didn’t care for Reagan’s Baker-inspired Israel team, either. But neither Bush nor Reagan seemed willing to abandon one of America’s staunchest allies. Israeli soldiers trained American troops in house-to-house city fighting, to better survive and win in Iraq. Israel shares intel on America’s enemies with us, and gave us invaluable information on Soviet weaponry during the Cold War. If America called, Israel would be there—and yet, Barack Obama is throwing Israel under the bus. The most pro-Palestinian president ever is turning out to be the most anti-Israel president ever.

His friend Rashid Khalidi must be a happy, happy man today. I sure would love to see the tape the LA Times refused to release. I think it would explain a lot of the UN speech.

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8 Responses to The most anti-Israel president ever

  1. chairwoman says:

    Meryl, you’ve mentioned more than once how terrible it must be to be a Jew in Europe generally, and the UK in particular, and how delighted you are that your (great?)Grandparents went to the USA instead of the UK.

    How delighted and safe do you feel today?

    Your President, and yes, I know you didn’t vote for him has spent the last 24 hours pulling the chain on the 2 countries who have always supported yours, and have done a good deal of the USA’s dirty work since the end of WWII.

    With the exception of Vietnam, the UK has sent, and lost troops to and in every distant war your country’s got itself into, regardless of whether or not it affected us directly.

    As for Israel, they’ve done America’s dirties deeds in the Middle East whilst being used as a proxy during the Cold War, and as a punch-bag since.

    I woke this morning to see President Obama’s UN speech and hear of his treatment of or Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and haven’t stopped retching since.

    This guy’s going to make Carter look like Lincoln.

  2. Rahel says:

    Why should making peace be difficult, unless only one side is interested in peace? By saying that it will be difficult, Obama has pretty much acknowledged this — and ignored it.

  3. Sabba Hillel says:

    http:daybydaycartoon.com has a good take on the speech. One of the characters tried to TIVO it, but nothing recorded. He checked the manual and found “It only records content”.

    I would put his U.N. speech on o slightly lower level than his speeches on the Sunday talk shows. I guess we are lucky that Joe Wilson was not at the U.N., he would have had to apologize to Obama again.

  4. Chairwoman, I don’t feel less safe personally. But I am waiting for the gubernatorial elections in November, and the Congressional midterms next year. The beauty of the American system is that we get to throw the bums out every two years. That, and the fact that Obama is only the president. There are 536 members of Congress that have equal say in how we’re governed.

    But I do agree that he is treating America’s allies shamefully, and that we have an absolute moron in office who thinks that speaking platitudes about peace is a substitute for a strong defense—which is the only way to keep the peace. I didn’t hear what he did to Brown. Will go check, and no doubt, be disgusted.

  5. long_rifle says:

    Don’t go look. You’ll only get pissed off. Just take his comments as truth. Dear Leader is really showing his intelligence…. er… Lack of intelligence. Either that or he REALLY believes that pissing on your friends and giving everything to your enemies works.

    And after all, we are the stupid ones! Of COURSE appeasing evil works. If you stupid Jews just give everything to the Pali’s then there will be peace! I worked in WW II right? When we appeased Hitler, he stopped fighting… Er…

    Well…. I guess it will work THIS TIME? What’s the harm in trying? I mean, I’m sure Obama will have ships stationed in the sea to pick up Jews as they are marched in. Right? Because he really cares!

    Seriously now. If Congress is not seriously changed in the upcoming elections I’m done with the system. Never voting again. I suppose it won’t matter anyways, if “obama care” gets in there will be to many suckling at the teat to ever effect real change ever again. We’re circling the drain. We’ve got one chance to stick in the plug, and if we miss the USA is done as a world power. And God help our 2nd Amendment if he gets a second term. After this horrible several months, I’d hate to see what a lame-duck Obama would look like in office.

  6. Sabba Hillel says:

    Actually, he probably knows that he is a lame duck and is trying to destroy as much of the country as he can before having to slink shamefully away from “the Shire”. (Tolkien reference to the end of the trilogy deliberate).

    As far as stationing ships is the Med, he will insist that they have to be beyond the three mile limit in order to stay in “international waters”.

  7. Michael Lonie says:

    Chairwoman,
    I was so disgusted with Obama’s treatment of Britain when Brown came over here that I wrote a personal letter of apology to the British ambassador to the USA. Obama is an arrogant fool.

    He just gets worse. He’s stiffed Britain, Israel, Colombia, Honduras, India, and South Korea while lavishing attention and praise on the likes of Gorilla Boy and Chavez. Now he wants to force the Hondurans to take back their tyrant wannabe, ex-El Jefe Zelaya, despite his constitutionzally proper removal for trying to violate the Honduran Constitution. At the same time he meddles in Honduras he refrained from even voicing support for the Iranian opposition because he did not want to “meddle.”

    Obama likes the tyrants and thinks, with Tom Friedman, that it would be great to have such a system here, so that he could just order done what he wants to do. None of this messy democracy stuff like with the tea parties. Enlightened despotism, that’s the thing. And Obama is the enlightened one. Just ask him (or his media acolytes), he’ll tell you so.

    Obama should learn that “helping your friends and hurting your enemies” may not be justice, as Socrates pointed out to the participant in the “Republic” who asserted that, but it makes a dandy basis for foreign policy. Unfortunately Obama’s friends, it seems, are not the friends of the United States.

  8. chairwoman says:

    Why on earth am I surprised that President Obama snubbed our Prime Minister?

    Another blogger has just reminded me that he started his presidency by picking up Churchill’s bust and marking it ‘Return to Sender’.

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